New Ghostcrawler Blog: How Big is Your Spellbook?

Ghostcrawler is at it again and this time he's talking about abilities--particularly the number of them for each class. When designing classes, developers aim for a magic number but, as he explains, it never quite works out. It's just not as simple as one would believe and it's an interesting balancing act making each class have the right amount of abilities to both challenge and meet a player's expectations.

There are quite a lot of differences between situational abilities and ones used frequently in rotations as well. Ghostcrawler eventually closes with tackling the humanity of it all, explaining that it's not as simple as developing for a simulation; developers have to account for players and their ability levels as well as their personal experiences. Abilities change from PvE and PvP situations quite drastically. It's no walk in the park designing not only the right number of abilities, but the right variety.

Of course, that's the fun of it--right?

How Big Is Your Spellbook?

How many abilities should a max-level class have? This is something I ponder at least once a day and is a regular topic in nearly all of our class design meetings. Even if you pick a magic number, how many of those should be core rotational abilities versus abilities that are used rarely?

Each class has a lot of spells and abilities -- the hunter has over 60, including the various forms of tracking. Despite our pruning abilities for many classes, there are still probably too many overall. In vanilla, most classes had one ability they used much of the time for damage or healing. Other abilities were situational or, to be honest, not used at all. In more recent expansions, we’ve tried to develop actual rotations for all 30 talent trees so that you’re hitting more than one button most of the time.

When we talk about class “rotations” we’re just using that term as shorthand for the abilities you tend to use often, as opposed to situational abilities. In this context “rotations” aren’t limited just to classes who cycle through buttons A, B, and C in that order. It just means “stuff you use a lot.”

Kidney Shot is a situational ability. You wouldn’t want to use it every time it was off cooldown. Envenom is a rotational ability. You might not want to use it the moment it’s off cooldown, depending on what else is going on, but you’ll still get around to it pretty quickly. Cold Blood straddles the fence. It’s rotational in that your DPS will drop if you ignore it, but you can’t spam it because it has a cooldown. All three buttons require space on your action bar. You might scoot Kidney Shot off to the side if you’re a raiding rogue, but it probably commands a prominent hotkey if you PvP a lot.

What's the Magic Number?

There isn’t a magic number for how many rotational abilities a class needs, but we find that about four is the sweet spot. (Warning: four is not a magic number. Please don’t “helpfully” point out classes with more than four abilities as candidates for immediate design overhauls.) Elemental shaman, for example, get most of their damage from Lightning Bolt, Lava Burst, Flame Shock, and Earth Shock.

Many more abilities than four and it’s hard for us to carve off niches for them. Fewer than that, and the characters can become boring to play. We’ve tried to make it clearer about which are your rotational abilities (e.g. Overpower is for Arms warriors, not generally for Fury or Protection warriors), and we’ll try to get even better about this in the future.

We generally think of rotations as mechanics for DPS classes, but they apply to tanks as well and to a lesser extent, healers. Protection warriors use Shield Slam, Revenge, Devastate, and Heroic Strike as their single-target threat abilities. They also use Demoralizing Shout, Thunder Clap, and Shield Block, pretty much on cooldown. Given the number of situational abilities warriors also have, and that they prioritize different abilities when attacking multiple targets, you can argue that Prot warriors have too many abilities. To my mind, Demoralizing Shout is the least interesting one and the first candidate to cut. (We would have to cut the equivalent debuffs from all sources in order to prevent this from just being a warrior nerf of course.) We could also have Devastate completely replace Sunder Armor (i.e. Sunder Armor vanishes from your Spell Book) so there is no confusion about whether Sunder should ever be used again. That would help to get a few buttons off the bar.

Healers have less of a rotation, since much of what they are doing is always highly situational. However, Holy paladins do have builders and finishers, and other healers want to get their HoTs up before switching to cast-time heals, etc. All healers still have a group of core spells though. For a Holy priest healing a single target, these are Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Renew, and Holy Word: Serenity. If we gave healers a new healing spell, it would need to distinguish itself from those spells in some meaningful way, else it or one of the existing spells risks getting crowded out. Flash Heal is often the heal that risks getting crowded out most often, since so many of the healer talents give them more situational-ish emergency buttons, such as Penance and Power Word: Shield for priests.

It's Complicated

I’ve stuck with long-ish single target rotations -- the kind you’d use against a dungeon or raid boss -- for the most part, but of course it isn’t always that simple. As you’re leveling, you’re killing things very quickly, so applying long DoTs isn’t always worth the effort. A Feral druid could stealth behind every quest mob and open with Shred (or even Ravage), but for the most part it’s easier just to Mangle targets down and spend combo points on Savage Roar or possibly Ferocious Bite, since the target won’t live long enough for Rip to really do its job. These “quick kill” rotations can also come into group play where you’re dealing with adds that can’t be AE’d down for whatever reason (such as the risk of breaking CC). A Shadow priest might use Mind Spike in these scenarios rather than their full dot and Mind Flay rotation.

On the topic of AE, some specs have some fairly interesting AE rotations, such as Fire mages (Flame Orb, Flamestrike, Combustion, Living Bomb) and Survival hunters (Serpent Spread, Explosive Trap and Multi-Shot). Other specs have really simple rotations, such as channeling a targeted spell over and over. Boring. Going forward, we’re going to make more of an effort to make sure everyone has a reasonable AE rotation that at least involves more than one button. Part of the reason we don’t want groups just AE’ing down everything in dungeons that they don’t yet overgear is because we think the gameplay is less compelling. Adding a little more depth than just channeling Blizzard would encourage us to add more situations where AE is the right thing to do.

The Human Factor

Rotations are very different in PvP as well, where uninterrupted time to sit there and do max DPS is in very short supply. On the other hand, all of those situational abilities (crowd control, dispels, cooldowns etc.) are at a premium in PvP and very often have an even bigger effect on the outcome of a fight than the core abilities do. It is tempting, and to be fair sometimes appropriate, to solve class balance problems by handing out new abilities to make a particular class or talent spec more attractive to a team or at least more viable overall.

We can do this sometimes by tweaking existing abilities, but there is also a risk of “kitchen sinking” an ability. If a button does too many things, then you’re sometimes asked to say use an offensive ability for defensive utility or apply a debuff you don’t really want to mess with in order to get an ancillary benefit. We can cut down on potential confusion by giving similar or even identical abilities to multiple classes (now you only need to learn the name, icon and spell effect of one ability instead of a half-dozen), but too much of that risks class homogenization as well.

Because there are so many different scenarios (PvP, AE, quick kill, and long kill), classes end up with a lot of different rotational and situational abilities that you all are asked to manage and master. Your action bars fill up. Now add in potions and other consumables, mounts, trinkets, professions, and a potential host of macros, and your action bars get very full. Designers also feel a lot of pressure to fix neglected abilities rather than cutting them, even though pruning is often the wiser (but unpopular!) solution. An additional complication is that players expect (and rightfully so!) to gain a new ability or two whenever we increase the level cap. Very powerful situational abilities can serve this role, such as Ring of Frost, but players often react more positively when they gain a new rotational ability that changes up their second-to-second play style, like say Colossus Smash or Unleash Elements.

Too Many to Handle?

So when do we cross over from having “enough” cool abilities to “too many” cool abilities? The depth that comes from lots and lots of content can feel cool to a veteran player, but even for them, the intended role and nuance of every ability can become blurred. For the new or returning player, it just becomes incomprehensible.

A warrior who took some time off after Lich King and then came back to Cataclysm recently would have to relearn her rotation. Raging Blow? What’s that about? Yeah, it might be more interesting than just spamming Bloodthirst, Heroic Strike, and Whirlwind (even on single targets) like Fury warriors did in Icecrown Citadel, but it’s also just one more thing to learn. Even if the new rotation itself isn’t all that complicated, the fact that the design changed over time makes it feel more confusing than it really is at any one moment in time.

Also remember, that to be the best that you can be, you need to understand the abilities of every class, not just your own. Yikes. We designers have to be vigilant to keep complexity at a manageable level, not just for veterans who are active on the forums, but for returning players who want to see what changes Cataclysm brought to the game.

Greg “Ghostcrawler” Street is the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft. He prefers Greek mythology over Roman. Cooler names.

Comments

Comment by wcbittencourt

Maybe later on I'll update it with number of spells in 'priority' or 'rotation,' though I'd need a lot of help for classes I don't know.

And add one class that u forgot..... hummmm... Shaman! Yes, they suck atm, but still a class with some abilities XD

Comment by hymer

on 2011/04/26 13:26:45

I'm very relieved to find out they're aware of this. I always liked things like shadowform and moonkin form, because they restrict your options. I wouldn't mind it if they cut down on the number of abilities per character, hard. Maybe put more into talent trees.I'd like for there to be a simple, facerolling tree in at least one class I could play on days when I don't feel like doing something complicated. Just one. Let all the rest have gazillions of abilities, I wouldn't care. I could always switch to the simple thing when my brain feels like its melting.

Comment by Onimushua

on 2011/04/26 13:51:53

They counted tracking aswell in the Hunter spells, and thats about ~8 off.

I feels like certain classes have a very small amount of abilities to use, and others have a larger pool, which can get rather annoying. But one thing that really annoys me is Shaman totems, since they can take up a fair bit of space on your action bars.

Comment by OverZealous

on 2011/04/26 14:00:55

Still, Onimushua, that'd make 50+ abilities while most other classes have 10-20 less, it's alot

Further, I for one have always wanted more abilities, not less, I do play a Rogue though, and we don't exactly have tons of choices. A few more would be nice, but it'd no doubt complicate matters.

Comment by jaded1216

on 2011/04/26 14:01:20

Portals are counted in yes, if anyone knows the amount of portals you actually have I'll edit the number, but I couldn't find an accurate number.

Comment by Orranis

Further, I for one have always wanted more abilities, not less, I do play a Rogue though, and we don't exactly have tons of choices. A few more would be nice, but it'd no doubt complicate matters.

10-20?

Extending what Treskol posted.

Rogue

Base - 45

Assassination - 48

Combat - 49

Subtlety - 50------------------

Hunter

Base - 72

Beast Mastery - 76

Marksmanship - 76

Survival - 76-----------------

Mage

Base - 78

Arcane - 83

Fire - 83 (82 if you don't count Arcane Missles, as it fails to proc, though it's still in the spell-book).

Frost - 83------------

DruidBase - 76

Balance - 82

Restoration - 80

Feral (Cat) - 82

Feral (Bear) - 83----------------------Death KnightBase - 57

Frost - 61, 62 if you take Lichborne.

Blood - 62

Unholy - 62---------------

PriestBase - 45

Discipline - 51

Holy - 50

Shadow - 51 (52 if you count Evangelism from Discipline)---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Warlock

Base - 64

Affliction - 68

Demonology - 68

Destruction - 68---------------------

Warrior

Base - 50

Arms - 55

Fury - 55

Protection - 55-------------------

Paladin

Base - 56

Retribution - 61

Protection - 61

Holy - 61

Maybe later on I'll update it with number of spells in 'priority' or 'rotation,' though I'd need a lot of help for classes I don't know.

Edit: This is just pointing out abilities that are in your spell-book, or tracking tab. Things like open out spells for Warlock pets and Mage portal/teleports, as well as armor proficiencies are counted as spells.

Comment by Matte00100

on 2011/04/26 14:53:42

Yeah, it might be more interesting than just spamming Bloodthirst, Heroic Strike, and Whirlwind (even on single targets) like Fury warriors did in Icecrown Citadel, but it’s also just one more thing to learn

The day Blizzard realises that being interesting is more important than being easy will be a fantastic day.

You say "interesting", I say overly complex and unfun. As an Affliction lock in Wrath with 6 dots to keep up, raiding was stressful, overly complex and generally *wildly* difficult to do well. I hated playing my class.

4 dots though, that's just about right. I like having just 4 dots and a debuff to track.

Really?I loved playing Affli Lock because of that....Because ICC was already a walk in the park, I was so glad to have something to focus on...Managing 6 DoT's and Soul Swap at the end on the 12-minute Lich King fight was the most fun I ever had!

However, I'm pretty happy what they did with Destruction now, more stuff to look after than ever before =)

Comment by Astygia

on 2011/04/26 14:54:12

Obviously Blizzard hasn't played other RPGs that involve much more spells and abilities.I feel like even now, just as an example, DKs and Warriors have not even half the abilities of Druids or Mages.

Slightly out of touch with my DK (haven't logged him since wotlk), but in terms of warriors vs druids and their buttons... warriors are either dps or tank, so it stands to reason we have less buttons to push than a class which can change forms between tank, dps, and heal, regardless of their current spec.

Rogues seem to even have more abilities.

My pet class this expansion.... we do have a lot of buttons, but it's actually a pretty simple loadout. You have a few abilities that you'll always use in pve or pvp, and a couple you'll mostly only use in one venue or the other.

Mages are just a really twitchy class and have a buttload of tools to work with, I agree.

Go play games like Oblivion or Sacred 2 where you have a ton of spells to learn and use.Even fighting games have more combos than we have individual abilities.What makes you good is knowing what to use and how to use it, not how to limit yourself to 5 things.

Agreed... Aion is a prime example of a massive spellbook. It's nearly impossible to keybind all your abilities, as there's nothing you'll never use and can thus pad away to ctrl+7 or some weird keybind.

Honestly have no opinion either way on the amount of class skills in WoW. Everyone likes new toys; part of the leveling up process is becoming comfortable with what you have through repetition of use, so fitting that new ability every few levels into your play shouldn't be too big of a deal. By the time you hit cap sure you have a lot of abilities...but by that time you should have grown at least semi-comfortable with their keybinding/hotbar placement and know well enough how to use them for this to not be an issue.

Comment by Sweetscot

on 2011/04/26 15:25:17

Oh no....they think we need "interesting" aoe :( I like my hurricane/rain of fire style AoE LEAVE IT ALONE dangit. I hate when they add complication to try to make it "interesting" for me interesting is getting to watch a pile of mobs be roasted by lightning while I channel it. Also, yes the spellbook on some classes is pretty clunky but doesn't seem like a huge problem.

Comment by Interest

on 2011/04/26 15:28:56

I knew hunters had many abilities, but wow, over 60?

You are correct.

On another note: I really like the background for the blog.

Comment by Treskol

on 2011/04/26 16:26:52

Portals are counted in yes, if anyone knows the amount of portals you actually have I'll edit the number, but I couldn't find an accurate number.

Comment by LoKHor

on 2011/04/27 00:33:31

The only problem with having to use so many abilities in any given situation (core abilities aside) is having enough hotkeys within reach. Not everyone has a Razer Naga or a G15. Personally, I try to keep similar skills to the same hotkeys across classes and try to limit the skills within reach to just the two main bars (12 buttons each). That's 24 abilities, macros or forced procs (pots, trinkets, short-term buffs) within "easy" reach. I think it's too many. There's just not enough room for all the "necessary" skills for most classes.

Bandages, the portal and teleport menus, my hearthstone, buffs, professions and their related actions, and other odds and ends are on my left and right side bars, not bound to hot keys. I can hide the entire panels at a click because I use LUI. I use Decursive for removing curses (click the little squares) and to mount up. *Note: ^ is the key next to Backspace on a Japanese keyboard.

Some of my other toons are in a similar predicament, where it becomes hard to squash everything in to a mere 24 hotkeys. My rogue comes to mind, especially, but also my priest when holy specced. :/